Claude Monet was enormously impressed by the brightly coloured bulb fields of Holland. In the early spring of 1886, he wrote to a friend that the sight was ‘impossible to convey with our poor colours’. Monet had been to the Netherlands before, but was painting the sea of flowers for the first time.
Back in Paris, he sold the painting via art dealers Boussod, Valadon & Cie, where Theo van Gogh worked. It’s quite possible that his brother Vincent saw it there. Vincent gradually came to admire Monet’s swift brushstrokes and bright colours.
